Infrascale’s SOS Online Backup has been providing backing up user data since 2001. While it doesn’t come at nearly as attractive a price point as some of the other services we talk about in our online backup reviews, it comes with one major advantage you won’t get with some of the more value-based options: speed.

Thanks to a global network of servers based in the U.S., Australia, India and the Ukraine, SOS Online Backup makes full use of your internet bandwidth by avoiding some of the server congestion issues that seem to plague many other options.

During this SOS Online Backup review, we’ll weigh the cost of service against that speed advantage, as well as look at security, support and other key backup features to figure out where it stands in relation to the rest of the best online backup field.

For those who want something a bit more tl;dr, the quick version is that the service provides some excellent backup features like mobile and NAS support, private encryption, true archiving and unlimited versioning. However, it also misses on important features like continuous backup, browser access to files and two-factor authentication, leave it feeling like a bit of mixed bag.

If you’re a business user, there’s also an office version of SOS Online Backup, although it’s also marred by a price that will only appeal to those with deep pockets, and doesn’t otherwise hold up well against some of the other best online backup for business picks.

Interested in finding out more? Stick with us as we break down the details in full, or try the service out yourself with a 15-day free trial.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Features

79% - Good

SOS Online Backup provides disaster recovery for both computers and smartphones. The smartphone inclusion is nice, since many competing backup services are only designed for computer backup.

However, while you can backup unlimited mobile devices, a single subscription limits you to just five computers. While that’ll probably be enough for most home users, IDrive (read our IDrive review) lets you backup both unlimited phones and computers, and at a better price.

Supported computer operating systems include Windows and Mac, but not Linux. See our best online backup for Linux article for some ideas in that department.

SOS Online Backup doesn’t impose restrictions on file size, type or number of files, which these days is pretty standard for any online backup. So is continuous backup, but that, surprisingly, isn’t a feature that SOS Online Backup provides.

You can only schedule backups, either hourly, daily or weekly. We’ll get into that more when we dissect the backup and recovery process, later.

A related miss is that SOS Online Backup doesn’t let you throttle upload or download speeds, which, like continuous backup, is pretty standard with modern backup tools. There is an option to limit the volume of files you backup in a given day, but that’s not nearly as useful.

Archiving and Versioning

Other features we like include true archiving, which means files deleted from your computer aren’t automatically deleted from the cloud, and the option for private encryption, which means you get to hang onto your encryption key so nobody else can read your files.

We’ll get into encryption more when we discuss security, as well as some security misses like no two-factor authentication.

SOS Online Backup also provides unlimited file versioning, although that will take up some backup space. That said, because backups are run at the block level, meaning only parts of files that changed are backed up rather than copying the entire file, versioning shouldn’t put too much of a strain on your backup space.

Mirror-image backup isn’t an option with SOS Online Backup for Home — just the business version of the tool. If imaging and cloning are features you need, our best image-based backup overview provides some alternatives.

SOS Online Backup does let you share files saved to the cloud, but only from your mobile device. Most other backup services that provide a sharing feature also let you do so from a browser UI. This isn’t surprising, because SOS Online Backup also doesn’t let you access files you’ve backed up from the browser interface, which is just bizarre.

Like we said in the intro, SOS Online Backup is something of a mixed bag.

Pricing

20% - Terrible

SOS Online Backup offers tiered pricing for home users, starting at $4.99 per month for 50GB. We appreciate the fact that the service gives you so many subscription tiers to choose from, which most backup services do not.

However, beyond that, the pricing is pretty disappointing, being quite a bit more expensive than competing solutions. $4.99 for 50GB of backup storage just won’t get you very far, and comparable solutions give you far more backup space for a similar cost. Backblaze, for example, gives you unlimited backup for $5 a month.

Ease of Use

Getting SOS Online Backup running on your home computer requires downloading and installing the client for your operating system. The whole process takes about a minute.

Once installed, you’ll need to login using the credentials you created when you setup your account.

Immediately after logging into the client, you’ll be asked to continue as a regular account or switch to managed encryption, called “standard ultrasafe,” or personal encryption, called “ultrasafe max.” We talk about that more when we review SOS Online Backup security.

Afterwards, you’re ready to begin backing up. The desktop interface is fairly minimalistic and assists you in creating a backup plan by scanning your hard drive to make recommendations. See our “backup & recovery” section for details.

You can also log into the web UI for a dashboard that’ll let you quickly check backup statistics like total used space and notifications.

There are also browser views for monitoring processes and generating reports. While most home users won’t need these features, it’s nice to have and an area when some of the competition falls short.

Other noteworthy features of the web UI include the ability to cleanup your backup space by setting retention and versioning policies.

Access to the SOS support portal is also available, as is an option to locate your device.

Oddly enough, for all of the different perks the web UI gives you, the developers seem to have left out the ability to actually access the files stored in the cloud from the browser. You can only do so from the desktop app or the mobile device.

Turning to the SOS Online Backup mobile app, we found the experience much more in line with our expectations. In fact, its one of the better that we’ve used. That there are only ten thousand downloads for Android is likely due the fact that the service just isn’t priced well.

The only downside is that you can’t select which individual images, videos and other files get backed up. You can only choose to backup a certain file type.

Overall, SOS Online Backup doesn’t do anything exceptionally useful when it comes to facilitating user experience and in fact is missing a few features of convenience, like access files from your browser. It isn’t difficult to use, just a bit limiting and unorthodox.

Backup & Restore

68% - Decent

Before you start backing up your hard drive, you’ll need to instruct the SOS Online Backup client what files to copy to the cloud. The tool helps you along by automatically scanning for files to backup.

Kick of the scan by clicking the wrench icon to configure your backup.

The scan will run and return a report of files found and estimated backup space required.

You can skip the scan process if you want to, but in our tests it only took a few seconds to complete. Either way, click “next” to continue setting up your backup plan.

The next step is to manually tag content for backup. This can be done at the folder or file level. Results of the scan are highlighted in red and included automatically.

If you ended up with far more files to backup than you have backup space available, you’ll need to either increase your storage or exclude some of the files automatically included. This part of the process can take some time, though it’s faster than approaches taken by competing services like IDrive and Carbonite (read our Carbonite review) thanks to the help from the scan.

The client lets you know how close you are to your backup cap with a handy gauge near the bottom.

Click “next” when you’re finished and you’ll be asked to configure some settings, most of which can be altered later if needed.

Backup Scheduling

The big decision is what schedule your backup will run on. Unlike most online backup solutions, SOS Online Backup doesn’t default to continuous backup, which is a means of protecting files as they’re added or edited.

Instead, it defaults to a daily schedule. You can decrease that to hourly backups if you’d like, but with the smallest interval being only one hour, true continuous backup just isn’t an option with SOS. This is one of the online backup solutions major flaws and a good reason to consider other options if you require more rigorous data protection.

If you prefer, you can go with manual backups instead by toggling off the “back up even without user intervention” option.

Prior to starting the backup process, you can also select to backup to the both the cloud and a local folder, which an be an external drive. This lets you achieve a hybrid backup solution, which nets you the advantages of both cloud and local storage.

There’s also an option to setup your retention policy for files deleted from your computer. Interestingly, this option is off by default, meaning SOS Online Backup offers true archiving. Useful, but if you’re working with limited space, you’ll probably want to set the client to remove deleted files from the cloud after 30 days or so.

Once done, clicking next will begin the backup. A window will keep you informed of the progress, but if you close it, SOS Online Backup will keep running in the background.

The client shows your file upload speed, but doesn’t give you any useful information like how long your backup might take. See “speed,” next, to find out how long backup took during our testing.

Use the client to restore files by clicking the “view/restore” button.

You can browse files stored in the cloud or use a search bar to find them more quickly if you know the names

You can restore files to their original or a new location. If you’ve set up personal encryption, you’ll need to enter your password before completing the restoration.

As mentioned, you can’t restore files from your browser — just the desktop and mobile apps. This is definitely a mark against SOS Online Backup, as browser access to files is one of the key conveniences of most online backup tools.

Speed

83% - Good

Initial backups can take quite a bit of time if you’ve got hundreds of gigabytes to backup. Some backup solutions, like Acronis True Image, run much more quickly than others, however.

To see where SOS Online Backup compares, we conducted a series of simple backup and recovery tests using a 1GB compressed folder made up of different file types. These tests were run using a WiFi network with 10 Mbps upload and 30 Mbps download speeds.

Here are the test results:

Test One:

Test Two:

Average:

Upload:

21 minutes

23 minutes

22 minutes

Download:

8.5 minutes

10 minutes

9.25 minutes

While with a 10 Mbps upload speed, you might expect that we’d see a 1GB file uploaded in about 15 minutes, most online backups run slower, likely due to encryption processes and generally thin infrastructure compared to cloud storage services like Dropbox.

The upload times weren’t quite as zippy as Acronis True Image, but faster than most. We often see online backup services take over an hour to upload a gigabyte, so anything less is better than average.

The download times were also very good.

Part of the reason for the good speeds is likely that SOS has server locations around the world. Popular value-based options like Carbonite, IDrive and Backblaze, meanwhile, are limited to the U.S.

SOS Online Backup doesn’t let you throttle file copy speeds, which is a miss. Another miss, and one that’s much more common, is that SOS doesn’t provide any form of courier recovery or backup service for home users like IDrive. Courier services can mean much faster speeds for large data loads

Security

68% - Decent

By default, files sent to SOS Online Backup aren’t encrypted. However, you’re given the option of adding 256-bit AES encryption, which we suggest you take.

You can either choose to let SOS generate and keep your encryption key, or you can choose personal encryption. Personal encryption means private, end-to-end encryption — also known as zero-knowledge encryption.

If you want to maintain control of your encryption key, you need to make that decision before you start backing up files. You can’t change it later, which is normal for online backups offering private encryption.

While more secure, the downside of private encryption is that SOS Online Backup won’t be able to reset your password if you lose it.

Files sent to SOS are also protected in transit using SSL/TLS to prevent online eavesdropping. Again, this is pretty standard fare.

Once at the data center, files are stored on servers. Presumably, copies of files are stored on multiple servers for redundancy and the facilities are secured against natural disasters and cyber and physical threats. However, SOS doesn’t provide any sort of security whitepaper to get a read on the measures in place.

Apart of an absence of information about security procedures, the big miss with SOS Online Backup is that it doesn’t give you the option to turn on two-factor authentication (2FA).

Support

85% - Very Good

SOS Online Backup maintains a support center for DIY help that’s accessible via the browser interface. Articles are searchable and split between home and business backup. They’re further divided between device type with categories for Windows, Mac and mobile.

At the time of this writing, there are 89 separate articles for home users. You find guides like “getting started,” “restore” and “troubleshooting.” The articles themselves are pretty thin, but often supplemented with video, which is convenient.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can also contact SOS customer support for direct support. Available channels include support ticketing and live chat.

We like the live-chat option and were able to get in touch with an agent in just a few seconds.

Chat support hours run seven days a week, 24 hours a day

Conclusion

There’s no question we were impressed by the speed of SOS Online Backup, and given the file upload issues that impact so much of the rest of the online backup field, we don’t doubt that some people will be happy to pay up for this service.

However, some people are also happy to pay up for a new Ferrari, too. For the rest of the world, the cost of service prohibits SOS Online Backup from really standing out in the backup field. On top of that, odd quirks like the lack of browser-based file access and continuous backup make the service feel a bit dated.

Power users with a need for speed, not to mention hybrid and NAS backup requirements, are better off going with an option like Acronis True Image or even CloudBerry Backup (read our CloudBerry Backup review) paired with Amazon S3, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure for storage. True Image, like SOS Online Backup, also provides mobile device support.

That’s all we have to say on SOS Online Backup for now. If you think you can stomach the cost, it’s not all bad, but we’d recommend going with the 15-day free trial, first. If you can’t stomach it, our best online backup picks provide plenty of other options to sort through.

Let us know what you think of SOS Online Backup in the comments, below. Thanks for reading.

26 thoughts on “SOS Online Backup”

I just signed up for SOS and I must say until now that I like it quite a bit. I use the Windows version and backup my whole family’s computers. I find though that the more computers I add the slower the backup gets. THAT ANNOYS ME QUITE A BIT!

A good feature in my opinion is backing up smartphones, whoever if you’re using an iPhone you can just tell SOS to backup the folder where you iTunes/iPhone backups are stored – that’s basically the same thing.

Can’t say much about support either, have read good and bad things on some forums but fortunately didn’t need it so far. Overall I’m happy with SOS, though it is on the more expensive side but I wanted an online backup service with years of experience in the field because I don’t want my backup service to go out of business when I most need it.

As suggested on this website I have done a test restore without any problems onto my external hard drive so I think it will work in case my PC crashes or whatever.

I have tried SOS online backup for both my Mac and Windows PC and all I can say is I like the Windows version a lot better. The Mac version seems to half-assed as if they were in a hurry to publish a Mac version of their software.Also, I did a test with two identical folders and the Windows version detected more files than the Mac version. So, this was kind of weird. Probably, I will back up my Macintosh computer with a different online backup solution and only use SOS online backup for my Windows PCs. In terms of speed I am actually quite happy as I can confirm the speed tests performed here. Upload and download have been perfectly acceptable (of course you have to be patient when comes to online backup). I have around 500 GB of data so the plans I had to choose is on the more expensive side – but I think it is well worth it. One thing that made me choose SOS online backup is their history when it comes to file backup. I just wanted to make sure that the company I chose wouldn’t go out of business and with it goes my data. Their proven track record a short me that this is the right choice.

Bottom line: if you can live with a little clunky interface and are willing to pay a little more for good performance and file security SOS online backup is certainly worth a look.

SOS for Mac is plagued with problems. I had been using SOS Online back up for 3 years to back up my MBP and accepted a few glitches with backups, but nothing really serious. Then in mid June of this year, I was advised that a new version of SOS software for Macs was available and was assisted with its installation and setup by an SOS tech. Following that installation, over 40 e-mails later, two phone support sessions, and 20+ hours of my time wasted, I never got even a single back up. Cancelled my subscription (with a refund from SOS), I have installed Crash Plan which has worked perfectly, without even a single glitch. This software may work fine for PC’s, but Infrascale/SOS is just not geared for Macs.

hi i think this is a good backup solution for people who have more than 1 pc. i backup only 2 pcs but it works great so far wihtout any problem. i had a couple of issues when installing the software but supprt helped me a lot and now everything is fine.

Buyer Beware! I read the reviews and SOS is a very popular backup service. So I tried it! I’ve also used Ibackup and Carbonite. SOS has had absolutely horrible service and I cancelled within 2 weeks. It started out with very slow backup speeds based on my connection where 50gb was going to take me nearly 49 days to back up running 24/7. I submitted a help ticket….there first response at about 24 hours was we can’t find you in the system??? Make sure your ID is correct…..it was….I responded 3 more times and they ignored me for almost 8 days without another response….and then said we haven’t heard from you yet their online ticket system had all of my responses in it…. Now….their support email bounces back…..this company is a SCAM!

hi – i wanted a backup service that would store all my photos (around 45gig) so that they wouldn’t be lost if my hard drive ever fails so i stumbled into the topic of online backup and i read a lot—and if i say a lot i mean a loooot! finally I understand things better. i chose sos because it allows me to backiup to multiple computers with one account so i chose the 100gb plan i think and uploaded all the files which indeed took a couple of days – but as many people say this depends on your internet connection mostly.

backblaze wasnt an option for me because i didnt want to purchase another plan whenever i cannot a new computer to backup some files.

mozy seemed interesting too, but their plans were a little too restrictive (only the option to choose between 50GB and 125gb or pay extra).

anyway, so far i am happy with this product but we’ll see how good it really is if I have to restore my data once one of my older computers fail.

I was particularly looking for a family plan that could cover at least five computers. SOS online backup seems to be the best deal and also had some great reviews here and on PC mag.com. So I thought, why not give it a try.Installing SOS online backup has been pretty easy because they guide you through with an installation wizard. After that it gets a little more complicated, I think, because I’m not a very computer savvy guy and some preferences and backup settings are hard to find here doing it for the first time. The performance has been all right. We do not have much data that we really need a backup of on our computers. Together this might be around 100 GB and that seems to be the right amount for SOS online backup.
I cannot say anything about sport because until now I didn’t need to contact them because they weren’t any problems with their product.
As mentioned in other reviews the software seems a little clunky and could need a good redesign of the interface.

Overall, I would give SOS online backup three stars but three starts for me means that it is a pretty good service because I’m a quite critical person. I hardly give for more starts because then the product would have to be perfect.

Not so happy with SOS. After tooling along fine for months all of a sudden my backups are so large they require an upgrade. I’m not sure why but I bit and selected 150GB button that said the cost was $99. The actually charged me $146 and change. My customer service experience after that was horrible and is still unresolved. They finally did turn on the service anyway with the 150GB cap and I started playing with it to see what the capability is. Soon got frustrated. Their is no documentation on how to use it. Sharing a file through email…I got a file but it wouldn’t open. The search on the site was useless. I have no confidence that if I really had to restore something that I would be able to or be able to get any help from them. I’m now trying to cancel the service and get my money back. They have asked me to explain why and review the customer agreement. Their zendesk customer service system actually has the email dialogue between me and some guy in India where there is plenty of documentation. They suck, the customer service sucks and I would NOT recommend SOS to anyone.

I do not recommend SOS for Macintosh users. The software and interface are rudimentary compared to the PC version. Many of the features in the PC backup are not available, and while they are working to improve it, I feel as if us Mac users have been given a Beta version.
The major problem I have with SOS is that files that are supposed to be backed up not getting backed up. Customer service has been prompt in responding, but not particularly helpful.

We are a user of SOS online backup and the service works OK; however, the service is terrible. Ever since the service was sold to Infrascale it has become impossible to contact Support. If you need to do a recovery than it will take 24 – 48 hours before you receive a response from them.

We were originally told that this was a temporary issue; however, over the last 6 months there has been no positive change. The support has only become worse. I would not recommend this service.

Easy to sign up for the service, but impossible to cancel. Absolutely awful support. No call backs on tickets, evasive. No one ever answers the phone. Absolutely no mention anywhere on the site of how to cancel service. Sneaky and deliberate.

Continues to charge credit card, even after the service has been cancelled.
Please beware – it is impossible to get them to refund, even after showing them the backup history, where NOTHING was backed up for over a year.

I have had a fairly poor experience with the mac version of the SOS service, to the point where I gave up and paid good money for a subscription to CrashPlan. The Mac SW front end is very poor, for example the most basic of features, namely the ability to see what files will be backed up, isn’t present. More seriously though we had a poor experience with the web interface used to access/restore files. Over a period of several months it refused to work, simply saying “Unable to recover file or folder. Please try again”. The support team’s response varied from “the web interface doesn’t work” to “your files are too big” (a few hundred KB is too big?) to “please install the app instead”.

The PC service may well be better but the repeated failure of web-based file access was worrying, it gave me no confidence at all in the backups. Given that web access is a headline feature, to be told it doesn’t work was serious to say the least.

CrashPlan performs really well in comparison, I would recommend that as a much better mac alternative.

I tried this product for months and have never been happy. It runs constantly and never finishes. I have report after report that it failed. And when I decided to cancel, had to go through a “live chat” and fight off the attempts to keep my account open. There is no “cancel” button or easy cancellation process. I was told to let him configure it for me so it would properly, when someone did configure it in the first place from SOS. Just a bad product, annoying and very non-user friendly.

I just spoke to one of their team… my impression is that the unlimited deal from before was a way to get known, pure marketing, amazing offer = top feedback etc… and then change the deal (from 40/year to 150/month)… I must have been planned all along to find loads of clients… then weed out those that have more money than sense.
If a company can do this, it’s not a company that can be trusted.

My renewal came up as well. I was backing up just under 1TB and they asked me to renew with a 800% increase in cost to have my service reduced from unlimited to 1TB! I am uninstalling, closing my account and in the market for a new service. I can see having an amazing starting offer and some kind of increase, even double lets say. But 8 times the cost for reduced service. Outrageous.

I had been a customer of their since last one year. Had backed up over 11 TB of files in last one year mostly security camera footages.

I called them today to find out what will happen to my plan. The guy in Indian accent got my email id, “looked it up” and said that your plan is up for suspension on 30th November 2016. I asked why, and he said that was deadline for every old user.

I said okay, so I have till 30th November 2016 to download 10 TB of files? He goes NO, Your files are already locked, you can just “view them” but you can not download them.

This is simply called a scam or high jacking. So, if I don’t renew for $499 PER MONTH. I loose my files and I can not even download them before the renewal date.

Scam!!!! I signed up a 3 year deal, unlimited storage, with SOS Online Backup. About a year into my subscription with them, I started getting emails and phone calls saying that I need to get in touch with them because I have to switch my account to their new subscription structure and that the unlimited storage is no longer available.

What a scam! It was is a baiting scam. They know that once you sign up with them, it is not easy to switch to another provider. And, what happened to the 3-year subscription I signed up for?

I signed up for SOS Online backup three years ago. When my three-year service agreement was set to expire, I was contacted numerous times by an extremely aggressive salesperson. I responded in writing stating that I did not wish to renew my service, as I had recently purchased a new laptop computer with alternative cloud storage. Instead Infrascale (doing business as SOS Online Backup) charged my Visa account $124.76 for a renewal. I disputed the charge through Capital One Visa and received a note confirming that the charge would be reversed. Half a month later, the charge has not been reversed. I have left voicemail messages and sent e-mail messages to the “salesperson,” and he has not responded.

My hypothesis is that the cloud storage market has changed, and SOS Online Backup is having problems competing in the new landscape. The aggressive upselling at renewal is a red flag. The unauthorized processing of renewals against customer wishes is fraudulent.

Joseph Gildred

A technophile with a love for words, Joseph Gildred utilizes his degree in comparative literature and background as an information technology analyst to ponder the future of human ingenuity. Not one to sit still for too long, Joseph joined the team because cloud technology and hopping from place to place go hand in hand. He has roots in Belgrade, Maine.